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Quick fingers dance on a backlit keyboard, sending brackets, and numbers streaming down a computer screen.

This is coding, an emerging passion for many students at Carlmont. Coding, unlike how it is often portrayed in movies, takes lots of time, and is not necessarily used for hacking. There were no coding classes offered at Carlmont up until a few years ago. Now, students can enjoy Intro to Computer Science or AP Computer Science, the two computer science electives that Carlmont offers its students.

Coding provides many job opportunities to students, especially due to our proximity to Silicon Valley. Silicon Valley is a hub for major tech companies such as Cisco Systems, Apple, and Google. These career opportunities are an inspiration to code for some students.

“My cousin works at Facebook, and they were my inspiration to begin coding. To me, coding is another medium to express creativity, and in my opinion it is a really fun way to do it,” said sophomore Zach Wong. “I am hoping coding can help me be successful in life. In the future, I hope to land a good job and, eventually, I hope to create my own startup.”

Some students decided take their passion outside of school by coding at their leisure, creating passion projects for fun or using it to earn a little money on the side.

“I got into coding around elementary school. My dad had bought me a book on programming, and I was hooked. I have continued reading books like that one, and I really enjoy it,” said sophomore Edward Vendrow. “I’ve made four apps on the iOS app store, and I have even made some money off of them.”

Teachers hope to foster this spark of passion and creativity that these students have.

“Coding provides many opportunities for students, so I think that it is really great that I see so many students signing up for the computer science classes that are offered. I find coding to be super helpful, as many colleges and jobs are now expecting applicants to know some basic knowledge of coding. I hope to inspire coding as a hobby and passion for all my students,” said computer science teacher David Lai.